More Tamarind Please!

12/12/07

I haven’t been keeping up with the blog as much as I would’ve liked to as of late. I have been blogging in my head quite a bit. So I’ve made a short list of things to blog about in the past month and a half, but I’m not sure I’ll get them all up here before late January. I’ll try to touch on a few of them now. In two days, we are leaving our site for our in-service Peace Corps training where we will reunite with all our stage-mates with whom we trained for our first 11 weeks. This training will last for three days. Thereafter, it is Christmas break until January. One thing that has been keeping us busy has been the planning of this 3-week research trip that we will pursue directly after the training. We are going to visit four major national parks: Andringtra, Isalo, Zombitse and Ifaty respectively (if you have a map, you can find them). We will end up on the west coast of the country in the city of Tulear for New Year’s Eve. A few days thereafter we fly back to the capitol from where we’ll take a taxi-brousse back to site. We would like to teach English in National parks across the country during the long school vacation in July and August. There are not enough well-trained English speaking guides in country. Tourism is the greatest natural resource here and both Madagascar and the environment are badly in need of tourist dollars. We are trying to gather data that will allow us to design a curriculum that will furnish specific vocabulary and language that is most useful for guides and then design a 2 or 3 week intensive program that we can bring to the parks. English in a box- kind of like the bookmobile! There are four other amazing people on our team: Travis, Kateri, John, and Bethany who will be collecting data for similar and related purposes. We are excited to spend time with these people. But, far from strictly business- we’ll be touring the parks extensively and we’ll be getting quite a good look at Madagascar. The parks cut across a variety of Madagascar’s micro-climates and each one is strikingly unique in terms of habitats and their range of biodiversity. In Andringtra, we will explore mid to high-altitude rainforest, granite formations and Madagascar’s second highest peak (peak Boby pronounced: boo-bee- perhaps a good omen) as well as flora and fauna typical of the eastern rain forests. In Isalo, we will explore the palm-savannah and sandstone massif typical of south central Madagascar. In Zombitse, we will see the dry deciduous forest that lies between the southern and western vegetation domains. Finally, we will visit the Spiny Forest at Ifaty in full bloom and at its most magnificent. If we’re lucky, we may even snorkel and see some coral reef- like everything in life: depends on time and money. We’ll have more to say about this adventure when it is finished. Right now we are, of course, excited and just very busy.
In a nutshell, I have been particularly busy because I offered to edit the Peace Corps language text for trainees and to prepare it for the first edition. The draft that we used in training was a few hundred pages and had a lot of non-idiomatic English, confusing learning objectives, and awkward (if at times amusing) translations in it. I’ve been working on it a lot so that I will have it done in time. This is in addition to teaching, correcting LOTS of homework and doing all the other things that one needs to do to live here. Stacey has been uniquely busy designing, proctoring, and correcting final exams for her hundreds of students.
In November, we were able to spend a week away from our site and stay in a town called Moramanga (lit. cheap mangoes) where we were invited to do a week of teacher-training for the Ministry of Education. We had a wonderful time. It’s much livelier than our town. It rests along the national highway connecting the capitol to the east coast, so there are always a lot of people passing through. We taught mornings and afternoons Monday thru Saturday. Evenings we went out mingled and tried to work on our Malagasy and drinking skills. We had a hotel room with a balcony for a week equipped with running water and a warm shower- nice for a change. The greatest thing about the town was this magnificent restaurant: Le Coq d’Or or The Golden Cock. The Ministry paid us a small per diem on top of our living allowance (they haven’t actually paid us yet), so we had a little more money for food this week. In the United States, we would not have been able to afford to eat at the equivalent of the Golden Cock everyday as we did. One of the attractions was the crevettes or giant shrimp from the east coast/Indian ocean. The first day we got the crevettes with Cajun sauce. They were enormous- almost the size of a small lobster tail and the sauce was spellbinding. Another day, the shrimp a la diable arrived spicy, on fire, and cooking at the table in flaming rum- the fluid that oozed from the bodies when cracked open was divine. We also enjoyed a tangy chicken roasted with tamarind sauce. Another day, we devoured the chicken with Coca-Cola sauce- a slightly sweet, but overall savory and immensely satisfying sauce. The pastries there are amazing as well. But, the thing that made us go absolutely gaga was the damn frog legs! We saw a plate go by covered with garlic and parsley butter. I inquired and we promptly ordered them the next meal. Man, I can’t even begin to say how delicious these things are. After this discovery, we just gorged ourselves on frog legs everyday until it was time to leave Moramanga! We now plan to stop in Moramanga again this Saturday to pick up where we left off! Our plates looked a bit like a mass grave when all is said and done- with the pile of little legs and all. Oh well, at least they’re not endangered.
When we got back to site all the damn tamarind had suddenly disappeared. Seasonal only means so much in the U.S. since whatever it is you want- it’s in season somewhere and it can just jump on a plane. Here when it’s done for the season, it’s gone. I was in the habit of making tamarind juice which is delicious and was my new favorite beverage. I tried to make passion fruit juice in its place, but what looked like passion fruit from a distance were actually runt mangoes- delicious by themselves. I asked Stacey to go buy some. When we figured out what they were we should have just eaten them, but I carried on with the juice plan. The juice concoction I produced was the epitome of foulness and engendered a horrific mess! Oh well, more often than not the experiments actually pay off. Although the tamarind was conspicuously absent, the town was now suddenly overtaken by lychee. The little fruits the size of a small plum with a reddish prickly exterior. They taste like a really delicious grape, but with a seed that’s too big to ignore. Anyway, they’ve made there arrival and there getting eaten. The road is littered heavily with their remains. We found two avocadoes in the market randomly the other day. Haven’t seen any since. They must have come some someplace not too far from here though, so maybe there is more to come. They’re quite a bit sweeter here than those in the U.S. / So. America. It still made a delicious sandwich & some guacamole. We baked a chicken. Actually, first we bought the chicken, brought it home, played with it, killed it, plucked it, gutted it, etc. Then I brine soaked it overnight in an herbed brine and then baked it. Of course, the gas tank on our stove decided to run out of gas for the first time in six months half-way through the baking process. This scenario entails taking the tank to the next town to exchange it for a full one. Not an easy task on public transportation here with a big tank in tow. Fortunately, we ran into our French friend Brice who is working for an NGO here to promote sustainable agricultural practices. He dropped us in the town, we got the brousse, back and then we got the guy with the rickshaw to haul it up to the house. Well, we got the chicken back into the oven and I must say, while there is still some room for improvement, it was one of the moistest chickens I have ever had! I’m sold on the brine soaking. I’m going to work to perfect it more. I suppose a few more words about food are in order as I’m obviously on the subject. We found a pineapple in the neighboring town on the trip to fill the gas tank. This find was elevated into an exquisite dinner of sweet and sour pork a few days later. To get the meat, I had to get to the meat market at 7am when they were carrying the pigs in- it’s quite a sight actually the pig is cut right in half down the middle snout to tail as if some sort of belt saw just cut it from end to end. The guy shows up on his bicycle with the pig halves tied to his bike rack. Incidentally, People also travel with the living pig tied to the bike if they need to get it from place to place- the pig squeals like hell! I needed to buy the tenderloins from two pigs to have enough meat. The pig is mostly fat and the pigs here are not the two-ton leviathans that hit the American market or are used to make prosciutto in Tuscany. In any case, the sweet and sour pork was great. Another favorite dish as of late has been the dried fried beef with spicy string beans. We still routinely eat the tenderloin of the beef- anything else is too tough. The other day, I had a thick filet mignon with great marbling that was so juicy it was like cutting into a watermelon- unbelievable. In truth, we are tiring a little of the beef thing. I’d gladly trade some of it for any of the following: 1) Even one of the myriad cheeses that I routinely consume at the Cheeseboard in Berkeley. 2) Saul’s deli hash with poached egg, half- dill pickle, and well-toasted poppy seed bagel with cream cheese. 3) The giant camarones quesadilla from Taqueria Monte Christo stuffed with cheese, sour cream, roasted poblano chilis, giant shrimp and grilled in a spinach tortilla then covered with chipotle cream, cilantro pesto, and tomatillo salsa. 4) A grilled pastrami Reuben with extra swiss and copious amounts of Russian sauce. 5) The lamb tiki masala and butanese chili chicken from Mount Everest with garlic naan. 6) The massive flame grilled chicken breast sandwich with artichoke hearts and mushrooms and cheddar with a basket of spicy curly fries and ranch dressing from Barney’s. 7) Any wine- even Gallo (maybe with some hot coppa in that case). Oh well, the sacrifices we make for our country. To end on a sweet note, I bought a plastic bottle (a former soda bottle) full of honey the other day from a woman in the market. It had a few bee bodies preserved in the honey at the top, so I knew it was authentic. It was unbelievable! Not the honey in the little plastic bear, that’s for sure. I’m turning into a bit of a honey bear since then. Stacey’s new favorite drink is milk & honey: adding the honey to the warm raw milk right after it has been boiled and then downing a mug. Mmmmmm.